Sorry for the lack of posts. Things are busy in the garden, at work and most importantly I’ve been involved with my daughter’s wedding plans. The wedding will be in a couple of weeks and things are getting a bit hectic here.After some hatchery and post office delays the chicks finally arrived two weeks ago... They are 125 White Rock rooster but a few seem to be something different. They are in a room in the barn that’s about 11 x 11 feet square. Chicks need an area where the temperatures are 90 degrees in part of the area the first week and can tolerate the temperature to be lowered 5 degrees each week for the first 6 weeks. To provide this temperature there are two heat lamps hanging in their enclosed area. They can self adjust their temperature by moving closer or further form the lamps. The chicks were two weeks old on last Tuesday.
Each week I plan to weigh a sample of the chicks and keep track of their weights. We’re also keeping track of how long it takes them to eat each 50 lbs of feed.
So far the weights are;
At one week, a sample of 10 weighed an average of 2.05 oz. each
At two weeks, a sample of 10 weighed an average of 4.45 oz each
From the weights you can see they more than doubled their weight during their second week.
I intended to take a photo of them today and brought my camera to the farm. Unfortunately I forgot to put the memory card back into the camera before I brought it with me. This photo from the first week will have to do for now.
Ohhhh.. your latest writings touched a long ago memory. We had a farm in Maine when we were younger.. including a huge barn ... and of course had to fill it. We had an incubator and hatched pretty much anything you can think of.. Including some chicks. Our girls were 2 and 7 at the time and loved those baby chicks. One, which they named Mathilda loved to jump up into our older daughter's arms. It was wonderful until Mathilda turned out to be Matthew and STILL loved to jump into her arms. Needless to say her feelings about chickens don't match mine.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing and thanks for the memories
Linda in Florida
I'm way behind in my blog visits. Good to see your posts. 125 chicks!!! I thought my 25 was brave. Heavens.
ReplyDeleteI *always* forget to put my memory card back in my camera. It lives in the computer, for some unfathomable reason. I know better, but I am apparently untrainable.